Tomorrow because it’s HD and took way to long to process I will annotate. But I used a combination of layer lock and clipping mask to make this digital painting. Most of the blending is a combination of painting with a lighter colour or using the smudge tool with a custom brush that I made. Tomorrow I will further update this post with better info but for now, enjoy what you can of this video.

This is just a random thing I thought to mention. Pencil tool isn’t really for sketching. It’s set to basic brushes for a reason. It’s more for making lines. If you hold shift while dragging up or down you get a perfect line but it you click then click a point in another direction all while holding down shift you get a diagonal line. If you do this with the pressure brushes even with a mouse you WON’T get a diagonal line, at least not one that’s very visible. I use to think that feature was excluded from photoshop elements until I actually found the pencil tool.

I watch some youtube videos on drawing now and then and a lot of people seem to use the line shape instead of simple click+shift+drag or shift+click+click with the pencil tool. The disadvantage with the shape tool is rasterizing and merging all of those lines and cutting and pasting. If you go to window>> guide you can then see a ruler along the top and left side. Combine that with using shift instead and you can measure out your lines like you would with a real pen and ruler.

This method also works with GIMP and a few other digital art programs.

Just thought to mention here that I’m selling some photoshop brushes. All of them are good quality. Made in photoshop CS5. Should work in older versions to at least CS3. Not sure about any older versions though. Should work in photoshop elements. It has for mine. I use them and made them myself . All the brushes are previewed to the left. Most of which I used on the image to the right. So basically this is my personal painting set with a few extras.

The oily looking brushes do excellent blending when used with the smudge tool. It often gives a watered down effect. Suitable for realism and anime art. Suitable for making watercolour style art in photoshop.

These brushes are NOT for re-sale. If you purchase these brushes you may use them in commerical works. These brushes are intended for photoshop users looking for a paint-like effect.

Installation- These instructions work for most brushes:

Open photoshop. Select brush tool. Right click page. This will open up the brush selection menu. The more options tab, click and select Load Brushes. Navigate to where you downloaded/saved the ABR file. You will then see it added onto your current brushes.

Any questions, just comment and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible!

This is for Photoshop Elements 7.0

Writing is huuuuge because I didn’t know what it would be like when it got downsized

Mostly random tips and very short in description. Quite possibly not helpful… hope not. But if you have questions or want a better explanation please ask in a comment. If you need a picture to go with it I will grab a screenshot no worries!!

If you have scanned in your lineart please go to the gimp video link below and separate your line art to make it easier for you. If it’s to complicated for you, change the layer blending mode to Multiply and keep it at the top.

I was watching this video and now I use the plugin in the youtube description rather than colourhalftone simply because it’s better, easier and has a wider range of tone sizes that you can create and takes out a lot of tediousness:[link]

If I don’t do it there then I go to GIMP and use newsprint in distorts under the filters tab. I wrote a tutorial here on how to do that: [link]

How to install the plugin:
Go to C: drive, Programs, find the folder Adobe, go to the version of photoshop you have, I have photoshop elements 7.0 so that’s the folder I go into. This plugin works in pse7. When you are in go to the folder labelled plugins open, go to filters folder, open and paste the plug-ins there. If you have photoshop open already, save your work, close, re-open and it will be working and located all the way down the bottom of the filters list.

I’m in love with MyPaint. It’s just amazing. The blending! THE BLENDING!! It’s so soft and smooooooth! And natural looking! But the blending! For months I’ve tried trial after trial and failed to find what I was after. I tried so many opensource softwares that I was loosing hope then when I was looking for a sketchbook pro or corel painter alternative I found this freeware gem. To me personally, it handles better than most paid programs.

The BEST feature in my personal opinion as a user is that when it has a bug, you can still save and it doesn’t close the program. It just alerts you. Photoshop and others, they just crash, there is no saving. This is what has me truely in love with it as of right now. It’s replaced paint tool sai for the time being. I adore sketching in it. I’ve got WIP drawings and finished drawing all over my tumblr now. Ok I exaggerate but I have been posting my work on my personal blog for a change.

The other day someone genuinely thought I had scanned in a drawing the pencil brush tool looked that realistic and I was pretty pleased. I can’t normally afford my own supplies and I really miss painting, particularly watercolour painting so it became important to me to find a program to satisfy those painting urges. It’s not very good or fun to have the need to draw and then not be able to do it.

The more natural looking the better and I still can’t believe that I even found such a program let alone a freeware one! I’m even considering doing my webcomic cover art in this program but it’s a bit of wait and see at this point.

In the video I was calmly and aimlessly drawing. I made up my mind of what OC it was when I got the face shape down but in the beginning I had no particular plan in mind. I just wanted to draw a face and nice hair. I did this one on livestream and then took it down speed it up and uploaded it to youtube. It’s about 40mins or so of work.

I used move maker to speed it up and that’s about it. I don’t have much to say except that you don’t have to change brushes much for blending. If you colour softly you can blend and it’s just brilliant! There’s so many ways you can edit the brush as well but I have yet to discover that.

Ok so here it is as promised. I will babble on a bit but I’ll do my best to keep it short and sweet. I’ve practically pulled my hair out trying to find a good method and in the end I found a plug-in that does the screentoning better… except it’s in Japanese… anyway moving on. This is a different way other than using the pattern stamp tool. I like this way better but that’s just a personal preference.

So, when you start your new drawing make sure the resolution is either 300, 600 or 1200. Mine is set to a res or dpi of 600. Just like in the GIMP screentoning tutorial I wrote, make sure to change the image mode to greyscale. You can do so by going to Image>> Mode>> Greyscale.

Like in the gimp tutorial, add a new layer under your lineart and colour in greyscale the lighting that you would like your tones to be in. Use gradient to achieve gradient tones. If you want tones of different sizes then you will need to make a separate layer for the other sizes.

When you are ready to create your screentones go to filters>> Pixelate>> Colour Halftone. Use the default settins and adjust the first box to a number like 4 or 8 for small dots and a larger number for larger tones. Some like to change the the other numbers to one number eg 10 others just like to change the angel from 45 to something else but I really don’t know enough about it. You’d be better off looking up more information about how to use the colour halftone filter.

I have mine on the default settings, first box filled with the number 8. Hit ok and you will have screentones.

Your tones should look something like this. Remember if the image is not in greyscale then this will not work properly!

You can make all sorts of tones in photoshop. My personal favourite is grain. I use it in a lot of things. Anyway, go to filters>> Pixilate>> Mezzotint… and you will have a variety of choices from lines to dots and you can get a lot more vareity. Combine this with half tone and you’ll create yet another type of screentone. I like using Mezzotint for clothing textures and wall textures though it can be a bit fiddly.

And that’s it. All I can really say is try combining filters and see what great textures you can make. Diffuse is the other common one to use and make tones. I see a lot of people use custom brushes like stars or strawberry prints and then use the colour halftone like have to create interesting screentones for their backgrounds etc.